Electrochemical promotion of catalysis (EPOC): Perspectives for application to gas emissions treatment

Heterogeneous Catalysis and Electrocatalysis can be used very effectively on air pollution
control. Air emissions coming either from mobile sources or from stationary sources, including
volatile organic emissions, nitrogen oxides, hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide could be well
converted to harmless non-pollutants at reasonable temperatures with cost-effective systems
utilizing heterogeneous catalysis and suitable catalysts. Some of the disadvantages of
conventional heterogeneous catalysts are the high production cost (since most of them are
metal supported catalysts), the short life time (due to the catalyst deactivation) and the
weakness to control their activity during the catalytic process. A new phenomenon of Solid
State Electrochemistry called Electrochemical Promotion of Catalysis (EPOC) combined with
classical heterogeneous catalysis could be applied in order to overcome some of the above
problems.
In this paper we are trying to show with characteristic examples how EPOC could be useful in
environmentally important reactions (oxidations, reductions, etc). The results show that EPOC
reveals great perspectives in environmental issues and especially in gas emissions treatment
technology. The utilization of EPOC could be really useful since we can increase the catalytic
activity, alter the selectivity to the desirable products and simultaneous control the reaction
rate during a given electrocatalytic process.